"Weaken" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was, "He who does well one work at a time, does more than all." By spreading our efforts over too large a surface we inevitably weaken our force, hinder our progress, and acquire a habit of fitfulness and ineffective working. Lord St. Leonards once communicated to Sir Fowell Buxton the mode in which he had conducted his studies, and thus explained the ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... National Church in this its supreme hour, is that of assisting and sustaining it, if it be in our power, in the interest of dogmatic truth. I should wish to avoid every thing (except indeed under the direct call of duty, and this is a material exception,) which went to weaken its hold upon the public mind, or to unsettle its establishment, or to embarrass and lessen its maintenance of those great Christian and Catholic principles and doctrines which it has up ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... The existence of a pair of kings was peculiar to Sparta, and is said to have arisen from the accidental circumstance of Aristodemus having left twin sons, Eurysthenes and Procles. This division of the royal power naturally tended to weaken its influence and to produce jealousies and dissensions between the two kings. The royal power was on the decline during the whole historical period, and the authority of the kings was gradually usurped by the Ephors, who at length obtained ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... nothing; life with me dates only from the wide plains and grazing cattle. I was born either in Germany or Austria. That's all I know. And to tell you the honest truth, boy, it's the reason I've placed my woman-ideal so high. So long as I place her over my head I'm not foolish enough to weaken into thinking I can have her. What woman wants ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... 10th I wrote to Chamberlain that Rosebery and Lefevre would help the Cabinet with the public, but would weaken us ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... your game of wickets, or of hurdles, or of cards, and any knavery that is in you may stay unchallenged all the while. But if the play may be ended at any moment by a lance-thrust, a man will probably make up his accounts a little before he enters it. Whatever is rotten and evil in him will weaken his hand more in holding a sword hilt, than in balancing a billiard cue; and on the whole, the habit of living lightly hearted, in daily presence of death, always has had, and must have, a tendency both to ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Maulincour had a friend in the old Vidame de Pamiers, formerly a commander of the Knights of Malta. This was one of those undying friendships founded on sexagenary ties which nothing can weaken, because at the bottom of such intimacies there are certain secrets of the human heart, delightful to guess at when we have the time, insipid to explain in twenty words, and which might make the text ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... home, was almost completely destroyed, and in its place in America arose sexual promiscuity, a weak community life, with common dwelling, meals, and child nurseries. The internal slave trade tended further to weaken natural ties. A small number of favored house servants and artisans were raised above this—had their private homes, came in contact with the culture of the master class, and assimilated much of American civilization. This was, however, exceptional; broadly speaking, ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... ensued, and the Turkish and Egyptian fleets were completely destroyed in the course of a few hours. By this impolitic act England and France played into the hands of Russia, who was anxious to weaken the power of Turkey, and thus they gave some help towards the long-cherished object of her ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... slowly. Her organization was always very delicate. Her frame was becoming thin, almost to meagreness; and this last disaster, whatever might be its cause, had contributed still more to weaken a constitution which education and nature had never prepared for much hard encounter. But, though I saw these proofs of feebleness—of a feebleness that might have occasioned reasonable apprehensions of premature decay, and ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... springing up from the ground as though carried away by the force he put into the blow. He was a fierce one, who fought with the iron, annoyed at finding it so hard, and he even gave a grunt whenever he thought he had planted a fierce stroke. Perhaps brandy did weaken other people's arms, but he needed brandy in his veins, instead of blood. The drop he had taken a little while before had made his carcass as warm as a boiler; he felt he had the power of a steam-engine within him. And the iron seemed to be afraid ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... thirteenth year, and it is a very old-fashioned and quite exploded idea to suppose that the springs of their nature lie dormant until one particular individual unlocks them. I am only saying that this girl was as yet entirely given over to her genius, and happy in it; and I loved her too well to weaken an impulse towards art which she could gratify, and create an impulse towards love which I could not for so long satisfy. So with all this in my brain, and with a guard upon myself that had never been relaxed since, I released ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... hath got respite for a while, Yet weaken'd much—my final rest is near. [To the servants.] Withdraw awhile; but wait within a call. Constantia! stay; come nearer to your father. Give me your hand, I wish a private conference On somewhat of much moment ere ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... Calvary. Those inevitable sufferings, that harrowing martyrdom of the queen he worshipped, and for whom he would have shed his blood like Jesus, roused in him a feeling of shuddering repulsion which ten years' practice of the same prayers and the same devotions had failed to weaken. But as the beads flowed on, light suddenly burst upon the darkness of the Crucifixion, and the resplendent glory of the five last Mysteries shone forth in all the brightness of a cloudless sun. Mary was transfigured, and sang the hallelujah of the Resurrection, the victory over Death ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... effects are twofold. Ordinary experience does not receive the enrichment which it should; it is not fertilized by school learning. And the attitudes which spring from getting used to and accepting half-understood and ill-digested material weaken vigor and efficiency ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... seem to me much too complicated. I cannot believe so universal an attribute as utter sterility between remote species was acquired in so complex a manner. I do not agree with your rejoinder on grafting: I fully admit that it is not so closely restricted as crossing, but this does not seem to me to weaken the case as one of analogy. The incapacity of grafting is likewise an invariable attribute of plants sufficiently remote from each other, and sometimes of ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... however, that O'Hara sought to weaken the effect of Rosenblatt's testimony by turning the light upon some shady spots in his career. In his ruthless "sweating" of the witness, the lawyer forced the admission that he had once been the friend of the prisoner; that he had been the unsuccessful ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... contain himself. "Take from the King his power and this realm will fall into anarchy, a bloody disunion, the like of which the world has never seen! This country is used to being governed, it must continue to be governed. Strengthen the King's hands—for God's sake, do not weaken them! Attach yourself to the King's party—'tis this unhappy country's only hope of salvation. Range yourself on the side of His Majesty's authority, not on that of this insane, uncontrollable people. What have I seen to-day? As I walked under the arcade of the Palais Royal, ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... total lack of statesmanship. In a country so circumstanced a wise ruler would strain every nerve to conciliate the conquered people, to strengthen himself by alliances which should be firmly maintained and by treaties which should be scrupulously kept, to weaken such states as he might fail to win over to his friendship by anticipating combinations which might bring with them fatal dangers for his power. That the history of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem presents a mournful and even ludicrous contrast to this picture ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... and somber potentate, known as "The Supreme One"—El Supremo—presided with iron hand. In 1817 Francia set up a despotism unique in the annals of South America. Fearful lest contact with the outer world might weaken his tenacious grip upon his subjects, whom he terrorized into obedience, he barred approach to the country and suffered no one to leave it. He organized and drilled an army obedient to his will.. When he went ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... religion which he developed in his youth. He was also a teacher. And although Latin was still a living language, the task of inculcating a new tongue in the students fell to the schoolmaster; Sherry was active in this capacity. This does not weaken an acclamation we possess of the man: "He was a ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry
... originality of the Hebrew moral law,(235) and pointed out the supposed defectiveness of the Hebrew polity; comparing unfavourably the type of the Hebrew lawgiver as seen in Moses, and of the king as seen in David, with the great heroes of Greek history.(236) The Hebrew prophecy he tried to weaken by putting it in comparison with oracles. In estimating the character of Christ, he depreciated the importance of his miracles;(237) and noticing the different tone of the fourth Gospel from those of the Synoptists, he asserted that it was St. John who first taught Christ's divinity.(238) ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... member of the "Black Salter's" family, he found "Marryatt's Novels," "Sinbad the Sailor," "The Pirates' Own Book," "Jack Halyard," "Lives of Eminent Criminals," "The Buccaneers of the Caribbean Seas"; and being a great reader, he sat up nights to read these works. Their effect upon him was to weaken the ties of home and filial affection, diminish his regard for religious things, and create within him an intense desire for a seafaring life. Nothing but a long and painful sickness, together with the wise ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... withdraw without committing themselves to a decisive combat, with a view of protracting the campaign until William should be forced to leave Ireland, and his foreign army should be worn out by winter service in an uncongenial climate. Every day would, they calculated, improve their own army and weaken and ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... half of my life? The realisation of part of my worldly ambition has not made me any happier, and, therefore, it is unlikely that the realisation of the whole of my ambition will make me any happier. My strength cannot improve; it can only weaken; and my health likewise. I in my turn am coming to believe—what as a youth I rejected with disdain—namely, that happiness is what one is not, and content is what one has not. Why, then, should I go on striving after the impossible? Why should ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... Doria, profiting by the moment that our vessels are empty of troops, should attack in force, we cannot with five thousand men repulse twenty thousand. The fort of Prevesa will defend itself quite sufficiently well with its own garrison; our business is to think of the fleet and not to weaken in any way our means of attack and defence, If the infidels force, or attempt to force, an entry into the port, they will be most likely merely losing time and ammunition in cannonading us. You know that it is principally in this that these accursed dogs do trust, whereas we, O men ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... in arms under General Shepard, and took possession of the arsenal at Springfield. Before the arrival of Lincoln, a party of the insurgents attempted to dislodge Shepard, but were repulsed with some loss. Not being pursued by that officer, who could not venture to weaken his post by detachments, they continued embodied, but did not venture again to ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... than Madame Carre; you don't know what to invent; between you you'll kill me!" the girl declared. "I think there's a secret league between you to spoil my voice, or at least to weaken my souffle, before I get it. But a la guerre comme a la guerre! How can I read Shelley, however, when I ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... than those of the body. Can we be sure, my good sir, that fear is not a disease? Do we know that love is not an infection? Can the criminal's gloves, saturated with his personality, be safe for the hands of an honest man? Don't we weaken by rubbing elbows with the weak? Are there not contagious ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... the difference. Well, sir, I came to the first pitfall—and, lo and behold! something had been and taken the bait and got away with it without so much as putting a foot through the wattling. I'd woven it too strong. So I thought I'd just weaken it up a little—it wouldn't take five minutes. I tried it with my foot—very gingerly. Yes, it was too strong—much too strong. I put more weight into that foot—and bang, smash, crash—bump! There I was at the bottom of the pit, with half the wattling ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... the doorstep. As no matronly figure materialized in that locality, he alighted, and obeyed a brass-lettered injunction to "knock and ring." Then he disappeared inside the house, and remained there so long that Dale's respect for the law began to weaken. The chauffeur had been given a racing certainty for the first race; the hour was nearing twelve, and every road leading to Epsom Downs ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... colored race. I am for enfranchising the black man, and then if this other question shall come up in due time, and I have a vote to give, I shall be ready to give my vote for it. But to vote for it now is to couple it with the great measure now pressing upon us, to weaken that measure and to endanger its immediate triumph, and therefore I shall vote against the amendment proposed by the Senator from Pennsylvania, made, it is too apparent, not for the enfranchisement of woman, but against the enfranchisement ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... with you, mi padre, whether I continue to be the best of Catholics or become the most abandoned of heretics. You know me better than anyone. You know that I will not weaken and bend and submit, like a thousand other women. I could be bad—bad—bad—and I will be! Do you hear?" And she shook his arm violently, while her hoarse voice filled ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... one is spiritual, and the other is natural. The plain English of both may be this, "that fools and malignants, such as (in some measure) know not the cause, and such as have no love at all to the cause, should be outcasts from this covenant." Such sapless and rotten stuff will but weaken, if not corrupt this ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... with our own. They are Native Americans by birth and blood, and we have no right to dispossess them by law of what we have given them by blood. We destroy their feelings by despoiling them of their rights, and by it we weaken our own cause. Give them the same rights and privileges that we extend to that miserable class of foreigners who are spreading pestilence and death over our social institutions, and we would have nothing to fear from them, but rather find them our strongest protectors. I want ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... tree, you would not," laughed Tom. "Out there you would be the plaything of the winds. Your body would be exposed to the glaring sun, the full blast of every passing storm, and the bitter cold of winter, which would, unless you were very hardy, have a tendency to retard your growth and weaken your vigor. Trees, like humans, do not enjoy a lonely life, but when they get together they immediately enter into bitter competition. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... much yesterday," said she, "and you were not sufficiently temperate at supper. Do not let it trouble you, dearest, I am sure you love me. Do not try to force nature, you will only weaken yourself more. I think a gentle sleep would restore your manly powers better than anything. I can't sleep myself, but don't mind me. Sleep, we will ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... so as to prevent type or illustrations from showing through, while at the same time it makes possible a smoother surface by filling the pores in the paper. But while it adds to the weight, clay must, of necessity, weaken the paper. In engine-sizing, which is done in the beater, the size is thoroughly incorporated with the fibers as these revolve or flow around the engine. This sizing renders the paper more nearly impervious to moisture. The difference between a paper that is sized and ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... advantage he could have of Him. And Christ did not repel him, as by the power of His Godhead He might have done, that he should not tempt Him, but permitted him to spend all his artillery, and received the strokes and assaults of Satan's temptations in His own body, to the end He might weaken and enfeeble the strength and tyrannous power of our adversary by His long suffering. For thus, methinks, our Master and Champion, Jesus Christ, provoked our enemy to battle: "Satan, thou gloriest of thy power and victories over mankind, that there ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... pseudo-criticism which cometh not from above, from the Spirit of God, nor yet indeed from below, from the sound region of fact, but from within, out of the naughtiness of the heart, defiling a man. I might weaken, too, the effect of the hymn by going on with the rest of it, and making you smile at its childish miracles and portents; but I should only do a foolish thing, by turning your minds away from the broad fact that St. ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... to shelter themselves with the canvas, and shouted back and forth through the falling snow that they were having a "scrumptious" time. But some of the girls, as Isadore said, "began to weaken." ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... notoriously corrupt and the cities harbor the great masses of foreigners. The high cost of living in the cities and the relatively low wages force the aliens into poor and crowded quarters which tend to weaken them physically and degrade them morally and socially. Among the Italians of the cities there appears to be a vicious element composed of social parasites who found gambling dens, organize schemes of black-mail, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... reduced the number of the inhabitants of the Philippines, since the independent Malays were especially notorious for their atrocities and murders, sometimes because they believed that to preserve their independence it was necessary to weaken the Spaniard by reducing the number of his subjects, sometimes because a greater hatred and a deeper resentment inspired them against the Christian Filipinos who, being of the their own race, served ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... not quite at the same time as we had discovered them. I most fervently hoped it might be as I surmised, for, if so, I should have the fellow at advantage, inasmuch as he would doubtless have put a fairly strong prize crew on board the ship, which would proportionately weaken his own crew. Full of the hope that this Ishmael of the sea might be about to place himself within my power, I caused all hands to be called, and, having first made sail, sent them to quarters, the gunner at the same time descending ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... was no need of telling Bob that it might alarm the boy and cause him to weaken, so that his grip would ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... any national interest in warlike enterprise. It is doubtless true that all restraint of trade between nations, and between classes or localities within the national frontiers, unavoidably acts to weaken and impoverish the people on whose economic activities this restraint is laid; and to the extent to which this effect is had it will also be true that the country which so is hindered in its work will have a less aggregate ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... information, as well as to cause friction when questions were raised affecting expenditure, accompanied by protests, even in those cases in which these questions were manifestly of a legitimate character. The result was discouraging, and in the opinion of Mr Main had done much to weaken financial control and to defeat the purpose of the order. It is unnecessary to detail the various changes that have been made by the institution of dockyard expense accounts in the department of the controller, and by various other alterations ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... hysterical twilight state in psychopathic individuals. These conditions were developed in them as the result of emotional excitement in imprisonment. The constant hearings, the confusing cross-questioning, the fear of punishment, finally the injurious effect of solitary confinement, shock and weaken the slight mental tension of the prisoner to a marked extent. As a result of this, we have on the one hand a condition of apathy, of inability to concentrate the mind, of incapacity to think and of a sort of feeling of being wholly at sea, accompanied ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... more, but dashed on for the saving cliff. Once his back was turned it seemed that the slide gained speed. The immense roaring literally leaped on him from behind, and in the roar, his senses were drowned. He could feel his knees weaken and buckle, but the cliff, now just before him, gave him fresh strength. But was the cliff high enough? He hurried up to higher ground and flung himself prostrate. The front of the slide was cutting down the heavily forested slope as though the trees were blades of grass before a keen scythe. ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... or extenuates; Louis XIII. furnished such proofs in abundance. I had contented myself by showing them forth; but this picture tarnished those which followed—so at least it appeared to those who had gilded the latter. They applied themselves, therefore, to cut out, or weaken, everything that might, by comparison, obscure their hero. But as they found at last that it was not me they had to correct, but the thing itself, they gave up the task altogether, threw aside my writing, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... the resistance of the powerful priests of Amon in Thebes. These men acted, of course, for their own interests in promptly resisting even mild attempts at reform. Perhaps also the king's aim had been from the outset to weaken the influence of the Theban hierarchy by new doctrines and to strengthen the royal power by steady secularisation. Open strife between the adherents of Amon and those of the Sun's Disk, the "Aten," broke out in the second or third year of Amenophis IV., ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... heads above the hollows of the little shell-like leaves where they lie secluded, have, nevertheless, been producing seed without imported pollen while their showy sisters slept. But the later blooms, by attracting insects, set cross-fertilized seed to counteract any evil tendencies that might weaken the species if it depended upon self-fertilization only. When the European Venus' Looking-glass used to be cultivated in gardens here, our grandmothers tell us it was altogether too prolific, crowding out of existence its less fruitful, but ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... man of the type often seen among Americans. He was very fair, with a pink complexion, thin, yellow hair and weak eyes. His manner was nervously alert, and though he often began to speak with an air of positiveness, he frequently seemed to weaken, and wound up his ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... time wherein he could be of but little service to me. When he saw the strange inflammation in my eyes, he bled me several times; but it was too late. And those bleedings which would have been so proper at first, did nothing but weaken me now. They could not even bleed me in the condition I was in but with the greatest difficulty. My arms were so swelled that the surgeon was obliged to push in the lance to a great depth. Moreover, the bleeding being out of season ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... again with his division for Damietta. Desaix is many days' journey to the south. Probably a force will march to Suez. I heard it said by some French officers that this would probably be the next move, and Napoleon will not care to further weaken the garrison of the city by ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... like iron, never born in a pure state but always mixed with elements that weaken it. Envy, greed and malice are mixed with every man's nature when he comes into the world. They are the brimstone that makes him brittle. He is pig-iron until he boils them out of his system. Savages and criminals are men who have not tried to boil this dross ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... from India to the Levant, he demonstrated that the Arabs were enriched at the expense of Christian Europe. Yet beyond the narrow confines of Syria were the Mongols, well disposed toward Christians, but enemies of Mohammedan Arab and Turk. First weaken the Moslem powers, said Sanuto, by an embargo on all exports of provisions and munitions of war to Syria and Egypt, and then overthrow them by a combined attack of Christian and Mongol armies. The great end ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... still clinging to him, with the ardent fervour of her own passion, she felt the rigid tension of his arms relax, the power of his embrace weaken, the wild love-light become dim in ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... nation. The nation commonly does not attend, but if by gigantic blunders you make it attend, it will remember it and turn you out when its time comes; it will show you that your power is short, and so on the instant weaken that power; it will make your present life in office unbearable and uncomfortable by the hundred modes in which a free people can, without ceasing, act upon the rulers which it elected yesterday, and will have ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... and "snatched" lose rather than gain force by adding "hurriedly" and "hastily." Look up definitions of "rush" and "snatch." When we wish to express strong emotion or to describe action resulting from excitement, we only weaken the impression by using unnecessary words. Simple, direct sentences are most forceful. In aiming to secure sentence emphasis, then, we should avoid circumlocution, redundancy, tautology, and verbosity. (Look up these terms in the ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... obstruct breathing and weaken the whole system through lack of adequate air, but they also press upon the blood vessels and nerves of the head and interfere with normal brain development. Moreover, they interfere in many cases with the hearing, and in general hinder ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... this foot is a most wonderful boring tool, fitted with a hard file. Hard rocks and wood are perforated by these little molluscs. Indeed, they are a positive danger, for they pierce the wooden piles of piers, and weaken them. They cannot pierce through iron, however, and so iron plates or nails are used to protect the piles from their onslaughts. You will often see stones and rocks riddled by the Piddock as if they were as soft as cheese. Chalk, sandstone, or oak, it is all ...
— On the Seashore • R. Cadwallader Smith
... hour of trial comes which you recognise for such. But you know not when the hour of trial first finds you, nor when it verily finds you. You imagine that you are only called upon to wait and to suffer; to surrender and to mourn. You know that you must not weaken the hearts of your husbands and lovers, even by the one fear of which those hearts are capable,—the fear of parting from you, or of causing you grief. Through weary years of separation, through fearful expectancies of unknown fate; through ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... And the young lord of Leesville stopped, speechless. Jimmie fell back a couple of steps, as a matter of precaution, but he did not weaken in his ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... jealous of this country's growing friendship with her old enemy, France, but any attempt to weaken this ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... established now. He knew that the moment he became violent, the young man would become violent too. He had, many times, been enabled to strengthen his influence, when any circumstance had occurred to weaken it, by adopting this cool and laconic style; and he trusted to it now, with very little doubt of its ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... a recapitulation of the whole introduction in the key now reached. The obvious sequel would be a counter-development of the fugue, at least as long as what has gone before, as in the clavier-toccata in C minor; but Bach does not choose to weary the hearer and weaken the impression of breadth he has already made here. Instead, he expands this restatement of the introduction, and makes its harmonies deliberately return to the fundamental key, and thus in an astonishingly short time the toccata is brought to a close with the utmost effect of climax ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... enemy from the field of battle as the sign of victory. By means of this victory strategy gains the object for which it appointed the combat, and which constitutes its special signification. This signification has certainly some influence on the nature of the victory. A victory which is intended to weaken the enemy's armed forces is a different thing from one which is designed only to put us in possession of a position. The signification of a combat may therefore have a sensible influence on the preparation and conduct of it, consequently ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... settlers, and saw that unless they made a powerful effort, and that speedily, they must forever relinquish all hope of reconquering Kentucky. Such an effort was determined upon for the next year; and in order to weaken the whites as much as possible, till they were prepared for it, they continued to send out small ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... out of the house and into the surrey. The cattleman took the seat beside Steelman, across his knees the sawed-off shotgun. He had brought his enemy along for two reasons. One was to weaken his prestige with his own men. The other was to prevent them from shooting at the ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... within itself the prophecy of two diverse lines. One would gain great tusks and a long, mobile trunk and live its life in distant tropical jungles; and another branch was to sink still deeper into the swamp-water, where its hind-legs would weaken and vanish as it touched dry land less and less. And here to-day we watched a quartette of these manatees, living contented lives and breeding in ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... policy is to discontent friends, while it rarely, if ever, conciliates foes; neither is it so elevated as it may appear to the superficial; for if we contend for the superiority of one set of principles over another, we weaken the public virtue when we give equal rewards to the principles we condemn as to the principles we approve. We make it appear as if the contest had been but a war of names, and we disregard the harmony which ought ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hard, Jerry." Gyp did not want to listen to much more—her own conviction might weaken. "But nothing matters except the match with South High. That's why you're doing it! Now if you want to just back out and bring shame upon the Ravens as well as dishonor to the school—all right! ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... of a social rise for herself in the marriages of her children. She fondly believed that Frederick, with his good looks and his wealth, could take his pick even amongst high-born ladies, and not all the good-natured ridicule of her husband served to weaken this conviction. She was not a great admirer of her daughter's charms, but she knew that the girl was admired, and had been noticed more than once by the fine ladies who had come to look at her furniture and hangings. She had a plan of her own for getting Gertrude ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of uncandidness and injustice upon your account. Neither have you succeeded in that deeper stratagem and less penetrable deceit, the assumption of the form of him she loved. It has however served to weaken her prepossessions, and relax the chains of her attachment. She is now the better prepared to receive openly and impartially the addresses of a stranger swain. Thus even your miscarriages have furthered your design. Thus may a wise general convert his defeats into ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... women and children be not shielded in their lives, their very vitality, from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they cannot alter, control, or singly cope with. Society must see to it that it does not itself crush or weaken or damage its own constituent parts. The first duty of law is to keep sound the society it serves. Sanitary laws, pure-food laws, and laws determining conditions of labor which individuals are powerless to determine for themselves are intimate parts of the ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... old when he landed at Quebec. If time had done little to cure his many faults, it had done nothing to weaken the springs of his unconquerable vitality. In his ripe middle age, he was as keen, fiery, and perversely headstrong as when he quarrelled with Prefontaine in the hall ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... which, he had had information, was about to come up the river. He minimised its strength and exhorted him to oppose its passage. This double-dealing answered his purpose, which was to keep the Bugis forces divided and to weaken them by fighting. On the other hand, he had in the course of that day sent word to the assembled Bugis chiefs in town, assuring them that he was trying to induce the invaders to retire; his messages to the fort asked earnestly for powder for the Rajah's men. It was a ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... a period which is sufficiently remote to excite curiosity; yet not so distant as to weaken the interest we feel in those ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... and friendly at the border of the lower campus as the bigger beacon in the college turret up on the lime-stone ridge. As Burgess started away the worst deluge of the night fell out of the sky, so he dropped down on a seat to wait for the downpour to weaken. He was very tired and his mind was feverishly busy. Where could Burleigh and Elinor be now? What dangers might threaten them? What ill might befall Elinor from exposure to this beating storm? He was frantic with the thought. Then he recalled Dennie, the girl who ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... foreign countries; a proceeding which naturally tends to weaken their nursery, prejudice in favour of the Religion in which they were bred, and by removing them from all means of public worship, to relax their practical habits of Religion. They return home, and commonly are either hurried round in the vortex of dissipation, or engage with ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... and grasping the truncheon of command. No greater harmony existed between the Prince de Conti and Madame de Longueville than when La Rochefoucauld severed them. At Bordeaux they favoured opposite parties, and contributed to augment the discord prevailing, and to weaken the party of the Princes by dividing it. The Duchess de Longueville, when no longer guided by La Rochefoucauld, did not fail to lose herself in aimless projects, and to compromise herself in intrigues without result. On ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... to me than I dreamt that anything ever could be again, to hear, in this perpetual obscurity, these extraordinary creatures—for even familiarity fails to weaken the inhuman effect of their appearance—continually piping a nearer approach to coherent earthly speech—asking questions, giving answers. I feel that I am casting back to the fable-hearing period of childhood again, when the ant and the grasshopper talked together and the bee ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... brotherly kindness, will constitute a cement which would forever preserve our Union. Those who cherish and inculcate sentiments like these render a most essential service to their country, while those who seek to weaken their influence are, however conscientious and praiseworthy their intentions, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... inhaling steam may benefit. Gargling the throat or spraying the nose and throat is cleansing and helpful; but in children it is sometimes hard to do this, for they may struggle and thus injure and weaken themselves more than they can be benefited by the spraying or gargling. Swab the throat if you can with solution of corrosive sublimate, 1 to 1000. Peroxide of hydrogen, one-sixth to one- half to full strength, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... When he awoke next morning, however, he was as inflexible as ever in his determination to go away. The fever had subsided; he was gloomy and restless, in haste to withdraw himself from influences that he feared might weaken his patriotic fervor. His sister, with many tears, made up her mind that he must be allowed to have his way, and Doctor Dalichamp, when he came to make his morning visit, promised to do what he could to facilitate the young man's escape by turning over to him the papers of a hospital ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... wilderness and on the prairies, we find a general impression that cultivation and refinement must weaken the race. Not at all; they simply domesticate it. Domestication is not weakness. A strong hand does not become less muscular under a kid glove; and a man who is a hero in a red shirt will also be a hero in a white one. Civilization, imperfect as it is, has already procured for us better ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquillity. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... had not the need been great. He had nursed Tommy once before, and she knew that in Tommy's estimation at least he had been the means of saving his life. He was a man of steady nerve and level judgment. He would not have sent for her if his faith in his own powers had not begun to weaken. It meant that Tommy was very ill, that he might be dying. All that was great in Stella rose up impulsively at the call. Tommy had never really ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... Court of Directors of the conferences aforesaid, assure them that "his inclinations [the inclinations of the Mahratta chief aforesaid] were not very dissimilar from his own"; and that "neither in this nor in any other instance would he suffer himself to be drawn into measures which shall tend to weaken their connection, nor in this even to oppose his [the said chiefs] inclinations": the said Hastings well knowing, as in his letter to Colonel Muir of the —— he has confessed, that the inclinations of the said Sindia were to seize on the Mogul's territories, and that he himself did secretly ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... sought a fulfilment of Messianic prophecy. We might treat these perverse and subversive conclusions as only curious instances of a wrong method of criticism. But they filter down from the scholars to the masses of Christian believers and weaken their faith. It becomes a duty to deal with the method which leads to such results, and threatens to destroy all our missionary zeal. Hence I proceed to test the value of the method itself, even though it is commonly called "the historical ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... springing from causes not connected with his administration of the government, has been great. Public gratitude for military service has remained fast to him, in defiance of many things in his civil administration calculated to weaken its hold. At length there are indications, not to be mistaken, of new sentiments and new impressions. At length, a conviction of danger to important interests, and to the security of the government, has made its ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... to quote the passages, in which the Holy Scriptures speak of marriage, even in the case of preachers of the Gospel, the shepherds of the congregation. They are too numerous, too decided, too striking for any one to overthrow or weaken. Laying hold of these, Zwingli had drawn up the papers just mentioned. Ten of his associates signed with him the one addressed to the Bishop. Others approved of the thing, but did not yet venture to avow it openly. The concluding words of the memorial to the Confederates ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... eyes in the first instance to this offence of theirs (viz., the slaughter of the crow), do thou weaken them one by one. Prove their faults then and strike them one after another. When many persons become guilty of the same offence, they can, by acting together, soften the very points of thorns. Lest ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... breath and I was perfectly overcome. There was not another room to be had at St. Lucia, and the sea-bathing seemed rather to weaken than to invigorate me. I went therefore again into the country; but the sun burned there with the same beams; yet still the air there was more elastic, yet for all that it was to me like the poisoned mantle ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... for sensitive natures, and tends to weaken their power of work. Paul was entirely alone in Athens, and appears to have cut his stay there short, since his two companions, who were to have joined him in that city, did not do so till after he had been some time in Corinth. His long stay there has several well-marked stages, which yield ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... the resembling qualities in us; and these qualities in us, being parts, are connected with the whole; and by that means form a chain of several links of the person we resemble. But besides that this multitude of relations must weaken the connexion; it is evident the mind, in passing from the shining qualities to the trivial ones, must by that contrast the better perceive the minuteness of the latter, and be in some measure ashamed of ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... women; they were proud of it; it showed the magnanimity that was natural to the universal Grandissime heart, when not restrained and repressed by the stern necessities of the hour. But Agricola disappointed them. Why should he weaken and hesitate, and suggest delays and middle courses, and stammer over their proposed measures as "extreme"? In very truth, it seemed as though that drivelling, woman-beaten Deutsch apotheke—ha! ha! ha!—in the rue Royale ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... strong enough to triumph over principle and sweep our minds bare of all the every-day thoughts. But afterwards—there is always the afterwards. The conflict must come. Reason stays with us always, and sentiment might weaken with ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... consequence of the prison breach, several innocent persons were arrested, whose modes of life or principles of faith came not up to the orthodox standard. If their apprehension answered no other purpose, it, at least, served to weaken the desire of the suspected persons to remain ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... an hour with another completely different account of the state of affairs, and by nightfall he had brought in eight more circumstantial reports, every one of which was a tissue of fables, invented to support or weaken the new Mahdi's power. ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... dazzling; and every minutest fibre of it lives. The first theme is another landmark in musical history. The harmonisation is extraordinary, not only for its gigantic strength, but for the free employment of chromatics that do not weaken it: in fact, chromatic harmony is so employed throughout the Mastersingers that it sounds diatonic. Throughout Tristan and in the Venusberg music of Tannhaeuser chromatic harmony is put into the service of passion; ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... epochs when institutions persist, after the beliefs and conditions which molded them have utterly disappeared. The inertia of such a rock-ribbed shell is terrible, and while sometimes the erosive power of agitation and discussion suffices to weaken and destroy it, more often the volcanic fires of social convulsion are alone strong enough. The first such shock came from within the English-speaking world itself, but not in Europe. The American colonies, appreciating and applying to their own conditions ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... course, feel that the judgment of the world does your country a terrible wrong. The Government which caused the war is not going to let its people read things which would shake their confidence, and cause them to weaken in their support ...
— Plain Words From America • Douglas W. Johnson
... content to think that his ideals are as lofty as their realisation is remote, and that the triumph of graft is as nothing compared with a noble sentiment. The result is that the Americans refuse to weaken their national prestige by the advertised cannibalism which is so popular in England. They are for their country, right or wrong. They do not understand the anti-patriot argument, which was born of the false philosophy of the eighteenth ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... an element of pathos enters into the peroration, it is a mistake to allow the voice to weaken. If it takes a lower note, it must make up in strength and intensity what it loses in height. Anything else is sure to prove ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... the cottage with Belinda, apprehensive that the talkative old dame might weaken the effect of her good sense and experience by ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... all humidity and moysture. But my father did not allow of this custome, warning men of strength, and those that are borne for the Common-wealth, not to accustom themselves to such kind of softnesse, which doe weaken our bodies. Also [c] when you put off your garments to go to bed, then put away all your cogitations, & lay them aside, whether they be publike or priuate, for when all your [* Page46.] members be free from all cares, ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... constitutionally can, to vary the practice obtaining under some of the state governments, it is this.... It is as much the interest of Georgia and South Carolina as of any in the Union. Every addition they receive to their number of slaves tends to weaken and render them less capable of self-defense.... It is a necessary duty of the general government to protect every part of the empire against danger, as well internal as external. Everything, therefore, which tends to increase this danger, though it may ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... draw me to her side, a willing and devoted slave; she measured my weakness with her own power; she knew—what did she not know? I torture myself with these foolish memories. All men past the age of twenty have learned somewhat of the tricks of women—the pretty playful nothings that weaken the will and sap the force of the strongest hero. She loved me? Oh, yes, I suppose so! Looking back on those days, I can frankly say I believe she loved me—as nine hundred wives out of a thousand love their husbands, namely—for what they can get. And I grudged her nothing. If ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... she seemed to weaken before him, he hardened. "You can't have both," he declared with as much sternness as was possible to him, and with a Norman wilfulness which was not strength. "You shall not marry an actor and a Protestant. You shall not marry a man ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... The dissenters, as well skilled in the art of war, have besieged the Church in form: and at all periods and seasons have raised their batteries, and carried on their saps and counter-scarps against her. They have left no means unessayed or practised, to weaken her. And when open violence has been baffled, and useless, stratagem and contrivance have supplied what force could never effect. Hence it is, that under the cant of conscience and scruple, they have feigned a compliance of embracing her communion; if such and such ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... time when every good man and true patriot should think much more of duties than of rights, and be more willing to forego personal rights for his country's good, than by factious assertion of them to weaken the arm of public power struggling to save the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... deeply resented his visit to Rosny, the purpose of which he had comprehended upon the instant, that he had resolved in consequence to quit the kingdom. As the voluntary expatriation of the Princes of the Blood tended alike to weaken his resources and to undermine his authority, Henry at once directed MM. de Bellievre and de Sillery to wait upon the Count, and to assure him that, so soon as he produced certain proof of the culpability of the Duc de Sully, he should receive ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... of the hammer was struck, by some inconceivable fortuity, at the moment when the Duchesse de Fontanges expired. Her death did not weaken my resolutions nor slacken my ardour. I got away quite often to cast an eye over the work, and ordered my architect to second my impatience and spur on the ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... increase the desolate aspect of the scene. But when the ruddy flames began to shoot forth and tip with a warm glow the nearest projections, they brought out in startling prominence the point of Bellew's nose and the bowl of his little pipe. Continuing to gain strength they seemed to weaken the force of distant objects in proportion as they intensified those that were near. The pale woods and dark waters outside deepened into invisible black, while the snow-walls of Bellew's chamber glowed as if on fire, and sparkled as if set with diamonds. The tree stem became a ruddy column, ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... laughing as he dragged me over some cliff, and I waked up cold with fear. No one knows what I suffered. I left the city. I went to Denver. I went to Butte. I traveled everywhere, but wherever I went night and day that dead man was hovering around me. I couldn't sleep and my mind began to weaken. One night I went into a gambling den. I thought the excitement might drive that vision out of my head. I played roulette. I bet on the black; the red won. And right before me I saw that printer's face just like I see you now, grinning ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... birth to her first child she had been subject to nervous fits which brought on terrible convulsions. These fits recurred periodically, every two or three months. The doctors whom she consulted declared they could do nothing for her, that age would weaken the severity of the attacks. They simply prescribed a dietary regimen of underdone meat and quinine wine. However, these repeated shocks led to cerebral disorder. She lived on from day to day like a child, like a fawning animal yielding to its instincts. ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... space than need be, presenting an unwieldy-looking mass when viewed at an angle, and shutting out a good deal of light (if that happen to be a matter of practical consequence in the case). Cutting off the angles (Fig. 5) does not weaken it much, and renders it much less unwieldy-looking, besides giving it a certain degree of verticality of expression, and rendering it more convenient as taking up less room and obstructing less light. But though ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... withdrawn from political life. Letters have passed; complimentary and sympathetic gentlemen have interviewed me and tried to weaken my decision. The great Raggles has even called, and dangled the seals of office before my eyes. I said they were very pretty. He thought he had ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... and black men the simple truth, the spiritual necessity for justice and fairness. It was not a question of social equality; it was a question of clearing a road for the development of Southern life. He would show white men that to weaken, to debase, to dehumanize the negro, inflicted a more terrible wound on the South than would any strength the black man might develop. He would show black men that to hate the whites, constantly to suspect, constantly to pilfer from them, only riveted ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... There was another evil of the day which the good Bishop witnessed with grief and indignation, and set himself zealously to reform. This was the publishing of romances, or novels, which, as then written, could only poison the minds of their readers, inflame their passions, and weaken their sense of right and wrong. He pondered the matter, and having made up his mind that it would be absolutely useless to endeavour to hinder their being read, as this would only increase the obstinacy and perversity of those who took pleasure in them, he decided on adopting another method altogether, ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... be inflicted on the chief criminals is a matter of little moment. The South has received a lesson of suffering which satisfies all the legitimate ends of punishment, and as for vengeance, it is contrary to our national temper and the spirit of our government. Our great object should be, not to weaken, but to strengthen the South,—to make it richer, and not poorer. We must not repeat the stupid and fatal blunder of slaveholding publicists, that the wealth and power of one portion of the country are a drain upon the resources of the rest, instead of being their ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... rob them and their weapons of strength. Other practices followed by savages before going to war forbid one assuming that this abstention is due to any rational fear of dissipating their energies. Instead of conserving their strength they weaken themselves by the many privations they undergo before fighting, in order to ensure victory. Professor Frazer ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... Northern war (1700-1721), at the end of which the population of Finland was reduced to a third, and its devastated land divided between hostile powers. Another division of the country (1743) only contributed still more to weaken the national strength. All that remained of this strength was required to maintain the union with Sweden, which was apparently the only salvation ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... constituents in North Kilkenny that they were not going to seek "the co-operation of a few aristocratic nobodies," and he, quite unjustly, as I conceive, attributed to Lord Dunraven and his friends a desire to weaken the ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... Pyle had followed her from his house. He could only imagine the facts. When Lena left that place to go to Bishop Wycliffe's, she doubtless had an honest desire to escape from the unwelcome attentions she had told him of. She must have begun to weaken only after discovering that the man for whom she made the effort ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... lady was powerless, he returned to the garden and tried once more to weaken the girl's resolution, but without success. It was with a very troubled mind that he took the train back to San Sebastiano ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... haven't you often said that you were perfectly happy wherever I was?" And darling will begin a weak argument in favor of her little unreasonable, sentimental whim represented by "Europe," although she sees that your mind is made up. But you have seen her weaken at your smooth talk, and you give her some more; and if that doesn't do, why, you kiss her, and then she's gone. And before you leave her she has assured you that she really would "just as soon" or "much rather" take a walk than go to Europe; ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... two Lords Justices, the three Vice Chancellors, the very Master of the Rolls about whom we are debating: and we, as if we were not already too weak for the discharge of our functions, are trying to weaken ourselves still more. I harbour no unfriendly feeling towards the Lords. I anticipate no conflict with them. But it is not fit that we should be unable to bear an equal part with them in the great work of improving and digesting the law. It is not fit that we should ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... known to every classic reader. It is considered as one of the most perfect works that ever came from the chisel; being at once a master-piece of composition, design, and feeling. Any sort of commentary could but weaken the impression which it makes on ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... province. The successful tour of Captain Gill, not merely through Southwest China into Burmah, but among some of the wilder and more remote districts of Northern Szchuen, afforded reason to believe that henceforth traveling would be safer in China, and nothing that has since happened is calculated to weaken ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... come to pain, to weaken, to disturb, to influence him, to shadow his peace, to wring his pride, to unman his resolve, as women do mostly with men. Was life not hard enough here already, that she must make it ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Sobieska, "but Josef reported them as reinforcements from the Rifles for the frontier. There may have been some cannon, but not as many as you think. He dare not weaken his strength that way." ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... to weaken," he said, huskily, and with the words a dark, hard, somber bitterness came to ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... part of the statement no comment could be made which would not weaken its effect. Taking its principle and its tone together, it is a doctrine which has never been paralleled. Let it circulate throughout Europe, that a member of the United States Senate in 1849, has openly proclaimed that at a recent period ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... defiant, but somehow he lacked the spirit. He saw those two frowning lads on either side of him, as he stood there leaning against the wall of the boathouse, his ankles tied with the rope; and he began to weaken. ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... give a guarantee of truthfulness which a simple affirmation does not give. Nor can any one, who knows the perfunctory formality and indifference with which such oaths are administered and taken, and what a farce 'kissing the book' has become, doubt that even judicial oaths tend to weaken the popular conception of the sin of a lie and the reliance to be placed upon the simple 'Yea, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... patient's natural vitality. Hence his advice: "In treating a patient, let your first thought be to strengthen his natural vitality. If you strengthen that, you remove ever so many ills without more ado. If you weaken it, however, by the remedies that you use you always work harm." The simpler the means by which the patient's cure can be brought about, the better in his opinion. He insists again and again on diet rather than artificial remedies. "It is good for the ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... God's throne in man, and the power of it His prerogative!' These are solemn words. Whether you leave me to live among you, free to do what seems right to me, or drive me forth, who have no wish to go, now and always I shall love you. That love you cannot take away, nor weaken, nor disturb." ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... said David, smiling at her. 'Still, no doubt it could be done, if it ought to be done. But Socialism, as a system, seems to me, at any rate, to strike down and weaken the most precious thing in the world, that on which the whole of civilised life and progress rests—the spring of will and conscience in the individual. Socialism as a spirit, as an influence, is as old as organised thought—and from the beginning it has ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shall belief; and then mightest thou well hold this people in thy land, and let them till the land, and live by their tilth. And if it subsequently shall befall, soon thereafter, that they fail in hand to hold troth, and weaken in work, and withstand thee, now I decree to thee the doom, what thou mayest then do. Cause men to ride to them exceeding quickly, and cause them all to be destroyed, slain and eke up hung. This I decree to thee; the Lord it hear!" Then answered the king, with ...
— Brut • Layamon
... send me some time ago. Everything you write is precious, and this volume is on the most precious of all our concerns. We may well admit morality to be the child of the understanding rather than of the senses, when we observe that it becomes dearer to us as the latter weaken, and as the former grows stronger by time and experience, till the hour arrives in which all other objects lose all their value. That that hour may be distant with you, my friend, and that the intermediate space may be filled with health and happiness, is the sincere prayer of him who ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... Others landed, the whole story was told and knives were returned to their sheaths. The skipper, the seriously injured and the dead woman remained on the deck. The skipper was in a black mood. He knew his people well enough to see that this unfortunate affair would weaken his power among them. They would say that the saints were against his enterprises and ambitions; that his luck was gone; that he was a bungler and so not fit to give orders to full-grown men. He understood all this as if he could hear their grumbled words—nay, as well as if he could ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... out everywhere the absence of the altruistic, supersensual traits which constitute the essence of romantic love as distinguished from sensual passion. All this will be preceded by a chapter on "How Sentiments Change and Grow," which will weaken the bias against the notion that so elemental a feeling as sexual love should have undergone so great a change, by pointing out that other seemingly instinctive and unalterable ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... intellectual vigor unimpaired and a natural reaction toward the decalogue. Others of more casuistical temperament, unable all at once to throw over the traditions of a New England conscience to the exigencies of the game, do not burst at once into falsehood, but by a confusing process weaken their memories and corrupt their imaginations. They never lie of the events of the day. Rather they return to some jumbled happening of the week before and delude themselves with only a lingering qualm, until from habit they can create what is really a form of paranoia, the delusion of greatness, ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... occasioned by the softness of the bones, induced by want of exercise, together with tight dressing, which tends to weaken the muscles that are thus thrown out of use. Improper and long continued positions in drawing, writing, and sleeping, which throw the weight of the body on one part of the spine, induce the same evil. This distortion is usually accompanied ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... retract. He was offered a high office in the Episcopal Church if he would accede to their terms. Such inducements he held in contempt. Neither threat nor reward could weaken his loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ and the Covenant. The closing sentence of his defence was tender, ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... least seeming advantage on the part of the enemy, have determined with them the fate of a whole campaign. By this hasty judgment they have converted a retreat into a defeat; mistook generalship for error; while every little advantage purposely given the enemy, either to weaken their strength by dividing it, embarrass their councils by multiplying their objects, or to secure a greater post by the surrender of a less, has been instantly magnified into a conquest. Thus, by quartering ill policy upon ill principles, they have frequently promoted the cause they designed ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... For him to attempt to add anything to the words of Taggarak would be to weaken them. They were the climax, and silence was golden. Throughout the eloquent appeal of the chief, Deerfoot stood with his hands idly folded behind him, his eyes fixed upon the face of Taggarak, whose pose gave a good view of his ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... of the fleet was totally opposed. It was natural that he should be so, since the detaching of three hundred ships for this enterprise would greatly weaken the force under his command. It would leave the fleet, he told the king, a miserable remnant, not superior to that of the enemy, for they had already lost four hundred ships by storms. He thought it infinitely preferable that the fleet and the army should advance together, ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the early French explorers have led to some singular discussions about Western history—have even been used by diplomatists to support or weaken territorial claims. Such, for example, is the question concerning the antiquity of Vincennes, a controversy founded on the mistake noticed in the text. Vide Western Annals. 2d Ed. Revised by ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... distance because they became weak, and that they became weak although they were eating their full ration or more than their full ration of food, save for a few days when they went short on the way down the Beardmore Glacier. The first man to weaken was the biggest and heaviest man in the expedition: "the man whom we had ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... binding force, and the tendency to subdivide showed itself on every opportunity. We have already, in the book of the "War of Succession," described the subdivisions of Breffni and of Meath as measures of policy, taken by the O'Conor Kings, to weaken their too powerful suffragans. But that step, which might have strengthened the hands of a native dynasty, almost inevitably weakened the tribes themselves in combating the attacks of a highly organized foreign power. Of this the O'Conors themselves became afterwards the most striking ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... thing necessary for suggestion or hypnotism is to put the brain of the subject in a state of relative repose, so as to prepare a soil ready to receive suggestions. These are then made so as to always increase the cerebral repose, in order to weaken the action of the threads of subconscious association of which we have spoken above. Lastly, the suggestion (or idea which symbolizes the effect it is desired to obtain) is accentuated as much as possible, and in a form which at once excludes all contradiction. ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... have the hearts and faces of lions, when at any time they shall be called forth to engage and fight with the King's foes, and the enemies of the town of Mansoul; yet a little discountenance cast upon them from the town of Mansoul will deject and cast down their faces, will weaken and take away their courage. Do not, therefore, O my beloved, carry it unkindly to my valiant captains and courageous men of war, but love them, nourish them, succour them, and lay them in your bosoms; and they will not only fight for you, but cause to fly from you all those the ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... away, before I weaken. Oh," she cried, as Hepsey put a strengthening arm about her, "I've been wrong—I know I have. However shall I ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... be the information that lawyers can give us, who can only relate what they have implicitly received, and weaken the arguments which they have heard, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... the outer walls went round the building on every floor, and in the angles of the tower there are small wheel stairs leading to every floor, and passages running round the tower on every story. These arcades and passages have tended to weaken the structure, and it has been found necessary to strengthen it with numerous ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... at the instance of the Chief Odysseus, written to request that some stores from the laboratory at Missolonghi might be sent to Athens. Neither Prince Mavrocordato, however, nor Lord Byron considered it prudent, at this time, to weaken their means for defending Missolonghi, and accordingly sent back by the messenger but ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore |
